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The richest man in the world buys one of the most popular social media platforms and uses it as a propaganda and disinformation machine to support a presidential candidate. What could go wrong?
that analysis From the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks misinformation, it found that Elon Musk posted at least 87 claims this year about the US election on X that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading.
These false and misleading posts have achieved more than 2 billion views, and not just because Musk is an influential person. It has also been found to Modify X algorithms So that his private posts reach everyone On the platform Because apparently, having 203 million followers isn’t enough.
CNN first reported Based on CCDH data, noting that Musk has given more than $118 million to a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump for re-election, making Musk the largest donor to Trump’s campaign. That PAC was driving Advertising campaign Impersonates Democrats and targets registered Republicans with unpopular policies not supported by Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. The ads are cartoonishly “woke,” saying things like “Help us make our schools as trans-friendly as possible,” and “Mandatory national buyback program means fewer guns and fewer tragedies. Kamala Harris gets it!”
In the past two weeks, a 404 Media report found that political action committees increased their ad spending on Facebook by 1,000%. Meta waited until last weekend to Ad blocking About social issues, elections or politics.
On the X, political ads are still streaming alongside Musk’s megaphone.
Anyone with an X account has witnessed a barrage of political messages from Musk, much of which has been in favor of Trump and far-right political narratives. The Human Rights Advisory Council found that Musk’s political posts have garnered more than 17.1 billion views since the billionaire CEO officially endorsed Trump in July. That’s twice as many views as all political ads on the platform combined during the period, and roughly the equivalent of $24 million spent on campaign ads, according to CCDH.
Researchers identified a total of 746 posts made by Musk between July 13 and October 25 that referenced terms associated with the US election, such as Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, voting, and ballots. The analysis comes from publicly available data from X about Musk’s posts and political campaign spending promoting ads on the platform.
Examples of false or misleading claims Musk has made about 21 million views.
“If the big government machine of the Democratic Party wins this election, they will ban voter ID across the country, not just in California,” another claimed. opinion 11.9 million views.
The research found that Musk’s claims that Democrats support “importing voters” have been viewed nearly 1.3 billion times.
Musk also pushed narratives about unreliable voting systems that were viewed 532 million times, according to the analysis.
For the record, there is little evidence to support the claim that illegal voters are “imported” to support particular political parties. Voter fraud is rare in the United States due to strict verification procedures at the state and federal levels. Experts He says Mail-in ballots are verified when the voter requests them and are verified again when the ballot is returned.
Like any organization that criticizes Musk, CCDH has become a target of the billionaire who recently did so Named The group is a “criminal organization.” Musk, a self-described free speech advocate, tried to sue the ACHR last year, but the case fell flat. extrusion by a federal judge who said the lawsuit was intended to “punish” the organization for criticizing X.
Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, said in a statement that Musk claimed that X’s Community Notes feature allows community members to verify the authenticity of posts, but Ahmed says the feature is “nothing more than a bandage.”
“Elon Musk has demonstrated through his personal behavior his disdain for the truth – is it any wonder his solution to the misinformation crisis on X has been so lackluster?” Ahmed said.
Ahmed was also on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week where he warned about using generative AI to reduce the marginal cost of producing and distributing a piece of misinformation to zero.
“So, what we have, in theory, is a perfect loop system in which production AI does production, distribution and then evaluates performance — A/B testing and optimizing,” he said. “You have a perpetual bull machine. This is very troubling.”
TechCrunch has reached out to X for comment.
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